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Label:This painting is an ex-voto, a devotional image produced in gratitude to a saint or divinity for intervention in a dangerous situation. This type of picture dates back to the fourteenth century in Spain and Portugal and was brought to the Americas with Spanish settlers. Fall from a Balcony records a miracle that would be clear even without the carefully inscribed caption, which tells how, on February 22, 1803, Barbara Rico fell and dropped the young child in her arms several feet to the stone floor below. But through the intercession of the Virgin, the child landed completely unharmed.

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Philadelphia Museum of Art Handbook (2014 Edition)

On February 22, 1803, a servant named Barbara Rico accidentally fell through a balcony, dropping the child she was holding to the stone floor below. As the inscription at the bottom of the painting explains, the child was unhurt, a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, whom Barbara had invoked as she fell. Popular throughout Latin America, ex-votos such as this were produced as offerings of gratitude for miraculous events. In 1950 modern art collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg donated an important collection of nineteenth-century Mexican ex-votos to the Museum. Mark A. Castro, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014, p. 257.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

The making of a work of art as a pious act--to record and celebrate a miraculous event--is fundamental to nearly all cultures. In Latin America ex-votos, or paintings made as offerings of thanks for divine intervention, have been tremendously popular, particularly in Mexico, where retablo, the Spanish word for altarpiece, came to be applied solely to these works. Thousands of such paintings survive (and continue to be made), showing, often in very literal detail, the intervention of saints, and above all the Virgin Mary, in the disasters of daily life. Their naïve and direct ability to convey a narrative has held great attraction for many modern artists and collectors, in this case Walter and Louise Arensberg, better known for their Picassos, Duchamps, and Brancusis. The miracle that this retablo records would be clear even without the carefully inscribed caption, which tells how, on February 22, 1803, Barbara Ricco fell and dropped the young child in her arms several feet to the stone floor below. But through the intercession of the Virgin, the child landed completely unharmed. Joseph J. Rishel, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 350.